John Saul - In the Dark of the Night

Only when he had committed every detail of her exposed body to his memory, but before the freezing chill in the air turned the best part cold, did he finally drop the scalpel on the bloody bedspread and plunge his bare hands into her warm viscera.

ERIC JERKED AWAKE with a sob.

He sat straight up in bed, utterly lost in the dark, his mind still full of the nightmare that had gripped him a moment ago.

His heart pounded so hard he saw red orbs glowing in the darkness around him.

Red, like the blood that filled the corpse into which he’d plunged his hands.

He gagged, rolled off the bed, and dashed to the bathroom, groping for the switch by the door, finding it.

Bright white light seared his eyes but freed him from the terror of the dream. He squinted, blinked, then saw his own image in the mirror.

He was still dressed in the clothes he’d worn yesterday.

His mind began to clear.

It had just been a nightmare.

His relief drained his strength away and he leaned against the sink for a moment, staring at himself in the mirror. His face was ashen.

Dark smudges lay beneath each eye, and sweat stood out on his forehead and upper lip.

His heart still hammered, and the details of the dream began to replay in his mind.

He needed to look at his hands, but he didn’t want to, terrified of what he might see.

He could still feel the slimy softness of the girl’s insides, could still hear the wet sounds his fingers had made as he’d plunged them into her torn body.

His stomach heaved and he barely made it to the toilet before his mouth filled with vomit.

When the nausea passed, he took a deep breath, steeled himself, and then finally looked down.

Looked at his hands.

Nothing.

No blood.

Eric raised his hands to eye level and looked first at his palms and then at the backs.

He examined his fingernails.

Clean. No trace of blood at all.

Yet he could so clearly remember the feeling of plunging them inside her—“Stop!” he whispered out loud. “It was only a dream.”

He splashed cold water on his face, filled the water glass and drank it down, then closed the lid on the toilet and sat for a moment.

The cold hard tile on the floor felt solid beneath his feet, and finally his pulse began to slow.

He waited, putting off the moment when he would have to go back into the bedroom where the nightmare might be waiting to torture him once more.

But it hadn’t been real, he told himself. It had only been a dream.

Yet even as he silently reassured himself, he could almost feel the cold steel of the scalpel in his right hand.

But it had only been a dream, he told himself once more. It couldn’t have been real, any of it.

Could it?

THE SMELL FROM the kitchen greeted Eric as he opened his bedroom door. He stood at the top of the stairs, rubbing his eyes, listening to his parents talking with his sister as they made breakfast.

A breakfast of waffles.

His stomach rumbled just at the thought, and he headed down to heed its call.

“’Morning, sleepyhead,” his mother said as he came into the kitchen.

“’Morning.” He kissed her on the cheek.

“Please, Daddy?” Marci was pleading in the dining room. “Can’t we look for Tippy now?”

“This place is paradise for a cat, honey,” Eric’s father replied. “She just went hunting last night, that’s all. She’ll be back. Cats always come back.”

“What’s going on?” Eric tipped his head toward the dining room as he poured himself a glass of orange juice.

Merrill handed him a plate of waffles, hot off the iron. “Tippy didn’t come home last night.”

Eric carried the plate to the dining room, where the morning sun streamed in through the big windows. At the foot of the lawn, the lake appeared to be paved with sparkling diamonds, and ski boats were already out taking advantage of the perfect morning.

In an hour, he thought, he would be out there, too, fishing with Kent and Tad.

“Tippy comes in every morning for breakfast,” Marci pronounced, clearly on the verge of tears. “What if she got lost? What if she’s on her way back to our house in Evanston?”

“If she’s not here by lunchtime, we’ll go look for her,” Dan said. “Okay?” He took the plate of waffles from Eric and forked two of them onto his plate. “Hey, sport. Great morning, huh?”

Eric grunted a greeting as he took a chair.

“I can’t believe there was a waffle iron here,” Merrill said as she came in with the coffeepot, refilled Dan’s cup, and then set it on the table. “What a treat.”

“Do you have to go back today, Daddy?” Marci asked.

“Yep, tomorrow’s a workday. The float plane’s coming to pick us up this afternoon.”

“This afternoon?” Marci echoed, her eyes now glistening with tears. “You said you were going to help me look for Tippy!”

“And we’ll find her,” Dan reassured her. “And if she’s not back by the time I have to leave, Eric will help you look.” He fixed Eric with a look that Eric knew would brook no argument. “Right, Eric?”

“Sure,” Eric said, pouring warm syrup on his waffles. He didn’t want to wander around in the woods calling the cat all day, but he knew there was no point in trying to get out of it, either.

By the time he had consumed two waffles and refused a third, Marci was already outside, calling Tippy. His father kissed his mother’s cheek, dropped his napkin next to his plate, and sighed heavily.

“Guess I’d better get out there and give Marci a hand,” he said, looking longingly at the thick Sunday paper that was lying untouched on a sideboard.

Merrill shrugged sympathetically, picked up two empty plates, took them to the kitchen and started loading the dishwasher.

Eric finished his juice, then took the remaining plates to the kitchen and gave them to his mother. In exchange, she handed him a white plastic bag of garbage. “Please?”

“No problem.” Eric took the bag out the back door and around to the side of the house, where a steel trash container with a bear-proof lid housed two big garbage cans.

He lifted one of the covers, then stopped short.

All the shop rags — at least a dozen of them — lay on top of the trash from last night.

Had his dad cleaned up the boathouse and thrown away all the rags they’d used while working on the motor?

But his father had told him to clean up the boathouse. And why would he throw the rags away? He never threw anything away, not even a broken TV that had been in the garage in Evanston for as long as Eric could remember. And the rags were still good — they’d looked practically brand new when he found them last week, even though they’d been in the boathouse for years.

Frowning, Eric put the bag of trash on the ground and picked up one of the rags. There was some kind of dark stain on it, but it didn’t look like oil. He pulled out more of the rags.

They were all stiff and sort of a dark brown. Whatever had been cleaned up with it had dried.

But they could still be washed, and the way the motor was acting, he was pretty sure he was going to need them.

Eric reached deeper into the barrel and came up with a wad of others, all stuck together.

He pulled them apart.

In the center was what looked like a fresh piece of liver, and his stomach churned as he realized what the rags were covered with.

Blood!

Every one of the rags was soaked with blood.

Feeling his breakfast rise in his gorge, Eric dropped the lot back into the can, put the garbage bag his mother had given him on top, then replaced the cover and closed the lid.